Condoms Effective Against Cancer-causing Virus

June 22, 2006|By Delthia Ricks Newsday

A three-year study of female college students has demonstrated for the first time that condoms provide remarkable protection against the human papilloma virus, the pathogen that causes cervical cancer.

The students, who had not previously been sexually active, helped researchers prove that women whose partners consistently wore condoms were 70 percent less likely to become infected with HPV than women whose partners used them less than 5 percent of the time.

Findings from the research emerge after years of mixed results from a string of smaller studies. Politics also entered into the fray, with essentially two polarized camps: those who wanted to further study condoms and those who touted abstinence.

Conservatives had long pushed to teach abstinence in schools and believed that condoms were ineffective because the virus could still be spread from sores outside of the area covered by the condom. But researches found such a likelihood to be small.

"HPV infection has become an important issue for women's health," said Dr. Jennifer Wu, an obstetrician and gynecologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, who was not involved in the research, reported in today's New England Journal of Medicine.

"Previous studies were unable to demonstrate that condoms protected against HPV transmission," Wu said. "Design flaws and a lack of information about the frequency of condom use may have confounded those results."

Following the most rigorous test ever of condoms, experts such as Wu are hailing the study as a new blueprint from which to approach the global public health problem of HPV. The World Health Organization estimates that 630 million people worldwide carry the virus.

Dr. Rachel Winer, lead investigator in the study, said of the 82 young women who participated, most of those whose partners consistently used condoms remained HPV-free. HPV was detected in 12 of the 42 women who said their partners were 100 percent consistent. Fourteen women out of 40 whose partners episodically wore protection were infected.

Winer said that despite federal drug regulators' recent approval of the first HPV vaccine, there is still a major role for condoms. "Condoms protect against other STDs, and most importantly, against HIV. The vaccine protects against only four HPV strains," added Winer, a research epidemiologist at the University of Washington in Seattle. Scientists estimate there are 200 strains of HPV.

HPV is most notable as a cause of cervical cancer, the second leading cause of cancer in women worldwide. The World Health Organization estimates that this year, 470,000 women will be diagnosed with the cancer, and 233,000 will die. HPV also has been implicated in vaginal and vulvar cancers in women, and penile cancer in men. In both genders, HPV triggers genital warts.

Epidemiologists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 6.2 million men and women in the United States become infected with HPV annually and that 80 percent of young women are infected five years after becoming sexually active.